


Blood Orphan

by ElectraRhodes



Series: Blood Family [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: ABO, Alpha Will, Canadian Cabin, Children, Hannibal is still Hannibal, Hannigram - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Omega Hannibal, Post TWOTL, Will is still pissed, age related fertility, non traditional abo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:44:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElectraRhodes/pseuds/ElectraRhodes
Summary: ‘At the very least he can honestly say he didn’t know. Had no idea in fact. If it had even registered he’d of course have said Alpha. The suits? The aesthetic? The dominant behaviour? The whole damn thing. Alpha.But this? This is a shock.And that it only really came together in his mind as they went over the edge? After Hannibal had just scented him? After they both bled freely over one another? After they killed the Dragon? Well. Just. Fuck.He holds on tighter. For sure. He may be slightly smaller but the urge to protect, to care, to own surges through him.Mine. Won. Mine.’A Post Twotl ABO story originally based on a photo set by TheJennire!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thejennire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thejennire/gifts).



> I’m embarsssd to admit how long ago I promised this! Finally a gentle nudge reminded me how much I was desperate to write it!
> 
> It’s based on a great set by theJennire on Tumblr and used with permission! The idea came originally from rossefreckles... though I’ve added in the ABO to mix it up a little.
> 
> The title comes from IncorrectHannibalLecterQuotes on tumblr. Also used with permission.

At the very least he can honestly say he didn’t know. Had no idea in fact. If it had even registered he’d of course have said Alpha. The suits? The aesthetic? The dominant behaviour? The whole damn thing. Alpha.

But this. This is a shock.

And that it only really came together in his mind as they went over the edge? After Hannibal had just scented him? After they both bled freely over one another? After they killed the Dragon? Well. Just. Fuck.

He holds on tighter. For sure. He may be slightly smaller but the urge to protect, to care, to own surges through him.

Mine. Won. Mine.

Omega.

And fuck it Chiyoh had better be there.

..................................

Three months later...

“Hannibal? Where are you? Are you here? I found a pharmacist, and just the right side of dodgy. Hannibal?”

In the kitchen Will finds traces of Hannibal’s efforts. So, up and about today. That’s good. That’s something. He’s been quiet, restrained, maybe even a low grade depression. Just possibly. Could be that this isn’t what he’d hoped for after all? Will can’t tell. Hannibal has always been good at not telegraphing. Or at least, carefully curating what he does let slip.

The coverage in the media has clearly bothered him. The escape. The killing. The death of the dragon. The rest of the escape. God Freddie Lounds is still beyond relentless and deserves a good eating. And then the almost capture and subsequent almost but also not quite killing of Jack Crawford. Will still winces at that. It had been a total shit storm. And just maybe Will had used it as an opportunity to wreak some vengeance. Five years Jack? Five fucking years of Hell. 

He takes a deep breath, the thing that bothered Hannibal most was being outed as an Omega. And the sheer level of outrage this had caused in the media; among medical and social pundits; and amongst his previous circle of acquaintances and friends. And honestly? Honestly Will can see why he kept it on the down low all these years.

Though Alana had known. Must have. And never said a word. Just put Hannibal on the most fucked up suppressants and medication legally available. Probably illegal too. She had the access, dammit. And had probably fucked up his whole system. Still it is what it is. And recovery of all kinds takes time.

“Hannibal?”

This time Hannibal hears him or decides to answer,

“Outside.”

Will walks through the kitchen, across the living room and out the side doors. It hasn’t escaped him that this house bears an uncanny resemblance to the one he shared with Molly. From the back at least. 

“Hannibal? Hey. I saw you cooked? Supper?”

“If you like. It’s in the oven. I’m not especially hungry.”

Will drops on to the bench and picks up Hannibal’s hand from where it was resting in his lap and kisses across the knuckles.

“Something happened? You want to tell me about it?”

Hannibal doesn’t turn to look at him, just gazes out across the scrubby grass to the edge of the woods beyond. They’ve hung up a few bird feeders, and there are deer, sometimes. He breathes normally but Will thinks he hears a note of concern in his voice,

“Have you noticed anything?”

“Have I noticed anything? I don’t think so? Why? What especially?”

“It’s been three months.”

“Sure. Just over if anything. It’s quietened down. That’s good isn’t it? Catch our breaths. Before we move on?”

“You’d rather not stay?”

“If we’re safe then I want to stay. Enough people we blend in. Enough mixed dynamics we don’t stand out. Enough privacy no one is a nosey fuck. Enough going on we don’t look too weird when we do join in. About right I’d say.”

He sighs and moves as if to pull his hand from Will’s grip. Will hangs on.

“Ok. Talk to me. And maybe not in some thing I won’t actually pick up on until we’re three months further down the line.”

“I haven’t had a heat.”

Slowly Will says,

“Ok. So. I know I’m not especially dominant. Maybe I haven’t done enough to trigger it?”

He nudges Hannibal gently in the side. After the rut and corresponding heat the fight against the dragon prompted they’ve had plenty of sex. As far as Will is concerned an illuminating amount. The old stories about sex between an Alpha and an Omega? Especially an Alpha and an Omega that mostly present as male? They don’t even begin to touch it!

“It isn’t that.”

He smiles a little wanly and Will leans in, raises a hand and brushes a thumb over Hannibal’s bottom lip,

“What then?”

Hannibal bites very lightly on the pad, touches it with the tip of his tongue, Will shifts a little on the bench, he can feel the interest stirring. Really? He’d felt this attraction all along if he’s honest with himself. And now? Now he’s allowed? Now they’re both here? Together? He lets himself.

He turns Hannibal’s face towards him and kisses him, gently at first, just along the closed seam of his mouth, then he pulls back,

“So what is it?”

Hannibal pulls one of Will’s hands up to his face again and kisses it this time. Then he looks at Will closely as though waiting for a reaction.

“I want a child Will. And it may be too late.”

Will loops both arms round him, perhaps a little but not entirely surprised, 

“We can try. Right? We’ll try. And if we can’t do it the traditional way. Well...”

He knows they’re both thinking of Abigail. Of what could have been.

“Shhh. Shhh. We forgave each other for that. Shh.”

He strokes down Hannibal’s back.

“Let’s give ourselves a couple of months. See what we can come up with. And if it’s no dice? Well. Like I say. There are other ways.”

Hannibal blinks at him, and then slowly nods,

“Thank you.”

Will leans in again and kisses him once more.

“Maybe we should try some of the traditional ways a little more vigorously first?”

It draws a laugh from Hannibal and Will counts that as a victory,

“I can assure you Will you are not lacking in that department.”

Will stands and holds out a hand to him.

“Good. But I think you need a reminder. We’ve time don’t we? Before supper?”

Slowly Hannibal smiles a little wider,

“Perhaps not for what I have in mind.”

“Better turn the cooker off then.”

He laughs when Hannibal rolls his eyes, tension unwinding from his shoulders, a looseness in his limbs when he stands,

“You are incorrigible.”

“Nope. Just pretty horny right now.”

He turns and leans back in to scent at Hannibal’s neck.

“Are you sure there’s nothing?”

He kisses him there, just over the mating bond. Hannibal shivers.

“I. I didn’t. I’m.”

Will presses up against him, breathes more deeply, mouths over the mark,

“There is. Fuck. Hannibal there is. Damn. I should have got more food.”

“Will.”

“It’s ok. Come with me. It’s ok. It’s all ok.”

Hannibal let’s himself be led indoors, and notices the very faintest of tremors in his hands. The slightest haze at the edges of his vision. A shudder as though someone ran a cold finger up the nape of his neck and into his hairline.

He lets himself be led into their bedroom, be pushed down onto their bed.

“I’ll look after you Hannibal. You know that. Always.”

When he leans down over Hannibal and kisses him, he feels Hannibal relax again, or maybe relax some more. Whether this is successful or not doesn’t really matter to Will. Children? He’s had his share of disappointments. And he hadn’t thought of it. But he can faintly feel that tug, to provide, to protect, to give. Feels it more through the bond now Hannibal has fronted up about it. Feels it pull on them both, drawing them closer together.

“I love you.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe some TW for issues around infertility, and some for referenced child neglect and abuse.
> 
> Take care of your selves.
> 
>  
> 
> Not especially or ecstatically nsfw, but sex is mentioned and implied.
> 
> .......................................................................................................................

Heat sex isn’t mindless. It isn’t relentless. It isn’t wild and rabid. Well, maybe it is if you’re a kid who has just presented and it’s your first knot or take. But they’re not, and it was a long time coming. And to be certain neither of them is exactly the traditional archetype of their gender and dynamic so it is a considered affair between them. With a kind of tenderness underlying the urgency, with passion and with focus. And it is perhaps, just a little, unexpected for both of them.

Will had wanted, has wanted, does still want, to ask Hannibal about Alana and Bedelia, a beta and alpha respectively, and he guesses that maybe Hannibal has wondered about Margot, an omega like her brother!

That hadn’t been heat sex but he’d still got her pregnant. So Hannibal knows that Will’s fertility, at least five years ago isn’t in question. And probably not now. Probably. It’s Hannibal who is the issue; maybe his age, mid 50s, that’s late, especially for a first pregnancy? Maybe the fucked up medication and suppressants, maybe just the extended period in the BSHCI and the physical abuse and poor nutrition he experienced there. All of these, any of them. Will doesn’t buy into the idea that behaviour outside the so called norm impacts your capacity to sire or bear children. That’s just another of those theories designed to further fuck up the already uneven and unequal treatment of the different dynamics and genders. Just another way to exercise control over people or encourage them to police each other. And he thinks it’s rubbish.

Between them then? Sex has been good. And given the fuck up they’ve made of everything else it seems to have resolved things between them. Settled them. Gentled them. That and the mating bond.

Will can even smile about that now. That whole feeling that they were beginning to blur. That the voice he heard inside his head was Hannibal’s. His cadence. His rhythm. His idiolect and perch. All evidence of both compatibility and a particular kind of mutuality. And even if he resisted it as long as possible, well, now? Now for sure he is Hannibal’s fool, unable to save the old un-mated, unbonded part of himself. And that’s all right. Now at least.

He sighs into Hannibal’s mouth. Kisses him again. Fits himself in and around them both securely. His knot has inflated and tightened and damn if they haven’t done everything right.

But the last two heats have been short, arriving abruptly and weakly and without warning, finishing quickly with only two or three cycles. They’re not enough. And nothing has caught. He rocks back and forwards, feels the anxiety pouring out of Hannibal’s eyes, damp and glued together by hope as if he can earn a way for them in salt, be worth it, first through the sea, then through sweat and now with his tears. An offering of sorts to the gods of the springs and other wet places. The home of all things birthed through terrible and other means.

He knows Hannibal is angry as well, raw and undercooked, and Will can’t help but wonder if maybe he had tried before. Before him. That Alpha he killed in his office. The doctor he colluded with to burn Will from the inside out, he’d had an affair with him for sure, back when. And then he’d killed him too. And Hannibal’s patient, the one Will killed, Cave Bear and all. And of course Dolarhyde. An Alpha looking for transformation, and maybe Hannibal knew and maybe the Dragon knew what Hannibal was as well. 

Had Hannibal simply at the most base level been keening for a mate? A blood dance and courtship, everyone had said so. Maybe. It’s a particular kind of pathology and really who cares now? Not Will, in the end it has always been Will. About him. So, what ever it was before, it is what it is now. This is what it is. And it’s beautiful in its own way.

When they hold onto each other tighter and Hannibal gasps and grabs Will knows that if it doesn’t work this time he’ll need to find a solution, a way forwards for both of them. Hannibal gave him a daughter once, and this time? This time Will will deliver one, in one way or another. Something between them, for them. Their own family. He knows he is obsessed by the idea too. Now. It has submerged him, drowned him. Again.

He can feel the rut begin to clear, feels a little saner now, but still intent. And sure.

.........................................

Three weeks later he comes home with a plan. A plan. A beautiful, fell into his lap plan. A concrete, tangible golden haired amber eyed plan.

One of which he thinks Hannibal will approve. Make her a blood orphan and bring her home.

Hannibal has tried for optimism these last few weeks. There have been no signs that it hasn’t worked, but Will is taking no chances.

Betrayal takes many forms and this may be the kind that Hannibal wont take kindly to in any form or fashion. There is an extent to which you anticipate betrayal, expect abandonment, know the bitterness of broken trust. Any point of contact welcomed, leaves the possibility open, sharp and bleeding. And even if you’re prepared, oh how it stings. Even in an inevitability someone known and already disappointing. And Hannibal hates disappointment.

He is, after all, a surprising kind of optimist, someone who revels. On the good days it makes Will smiles and on the bad days he simply cleans up after. But Hannibal is betrayed by himself, not in his head or heart, but in his hearth and home, and Will knows it is killing him.

None the less, there is lunch waiting for him and Will can hear music from upstairs somewhere. Not the theramin thank god, but a virginal. Less esoteric perhaps but still a challenge to find and install. Why couldn’t it just be a piano? Different of course in its clutch and spring, but embrace the difference Hannibal. Please?

Will doesn’t interrupt, just turns the heat up on the soup, sets the table properly with crockery and flatware and then takes his tablet over to the printer, switches it on and prints just five pictures. One taken outside a kindergarten playground, a child turning to wave on her way in; another on a walk somewhere (between the school and home. Will knows. He took it.); and the third the same child sitting outside a nice suburban looking tract home yard. In this picture she looks cold, no jacket despite the leaves on the ground and the feel of hunch in the air, blued at the edges, looking lost and sad. 

The last two images are of medical records. He had to break in for these. Small acts of desperation. And they speak of a child that falls over too often, who is too clumsy and stupid, who is underweight, too often ill, too often quiet, too obedient as well. And so small. And just three according to the documentation, though Will suspects that the records may have been altered somewhere along the way to explain her size, and the missed developmental goals. 

All Will can see beyond the bruises and malnourishment, the broken freight of her shoulders, is that she could be mistaken for Hannibal’s biological child; the blonde and silver hair, the chiselled cheekbones already visible, the well modelled face. But her gracile structure is suggestive of Will too, and the gentle curl in her hair. And a girl. A girl would be good. A counterbalance to them. Someone to dote on, to protect and finally save. Someone already in need of parental love, paternal.

Will collects the photographs from the printer and slides them into a manila folder he has ready. He places it beside his plate and then goes to the mule post at the bottom of the stair case in the small home they have made theirs. But only for now. For now. Not when home is in a small hand, a soft smile, an upturned face. And could be anywhere. May need to be.

He calls up,

“Hannibal? Lunch? If it’s a good time.”

He goes back to the stove and retrieves the soup, turning off the cooker. He smiles to himself as he hears the music stop and Hannibal comes down the stairs humming whatever he was just playing under his breath. Hannibal sits at the table and Will ladles the soup out, adds the crutons and sausage he found warming on the grill, and then brings warm bread to the table.

They eat in a companionable quietude until Hannibal sets aside his spoon,

“The folder.”

Will nudges it off across the table, and Hannibal looks at him quizzically before opening it. He flicks through the photographs then pushes aside his bowl and plate and sets them out beside each other in front of him. He reads the notes carefully. Then he puts them cautiously on top of each other and considers Will. Will tries at first to keep his face composed but he cant help the smile that breaks across it. Hannibal raises his eyebrows, not quite won over. Not yet.

Will reaches out over the table and puts a hand over Hannibal’s, still resting loosely on the images. He leans forwards, is a bridge of bright laughter,

“Our daughter Hannibal. Ours.”


	3. Chapter 3

Will strokes Hannibal’s back. Soothing. Smoothing. Chasing Demons.

“When did you decide?”

Hannibal turns over, props himself up on his elbows. He looks into Will’s eyes, no longer afraid of the contact, room now, spaces carved and danced in, together.

“The day I met you in Jack Crawford’s office. Though I will admit to a measure of curiosity when he came to ask if I would consult.”

Will considers this, laps at the idea. He’d entertained it as a maybe and perhaps, though he hadn’t asked. Hard to know though what the hot possibilities were back then. Some of the strands are tangled still. A gordion of query it’s sometimes better not to try and tackle.

“I’ve been keeping track of their movements. But I know you’re the expert.”

Hannibal acknowledges it, and the change of topic. No point in disavowing either. And Will was never one for empty flatteries. 

“Three weeks should do it. Any other factors?”

Will smiles and bends closer to Hannibal’s mouth, whispers there, so he can hear through his touch and taste rather than simply words alone. Hannibal is as sensory as they come.

“Alcohol. Over the counter meds. Some internal wrangling. It’s not DV.” He clarifies. “The woman isn’t the victim here. If anything she’s the instigator.”

“Turning vigilante Will?

Will blinks and closes the distance between them. He’s been constantly closing the distance, crashing into it, breaking all the limits, broaching the boundaries. Fighting liminality. Bone bridges, blood tunnels, ships of cartilage, muscle and skin, everything that can be moulded, fleshed, embodied has been. Is. He has been gutted and splayed. His whole body sings with it now.

The kiss deepens and he turns them again. Again and again. When he knots and comes he wonders if Hannibal is throwing out all the stops now, if his body knows, knows a child is coming. Whatever happens. And that it gives him peace. A blood quiet. Just a hum rather than something that screams across all the empty rooms of Hannibal’s mind. Or the laugh of a child. Chasing.

Theirs.

.................................

They trail the two parents. The boyfriend, and it transpires, not the mother. How they came to have the little girl becomes almost an obsession for Hannibal. Where they took her from, when, how.

It takes another break-in and payment for some on-line hacked child welfare records. But they find out.

The biological mother? Dead already. Maybe alcohol. Maybe drugs. Maybe to the deliberate but randomised violence of a partner. The biological father nowhere, not even named. And the current male ‘care-giver’, and how Hannibal hates the terminology, the boyfriend, arriving late in the child’s babyhood. But sticking around and convincing someone somewhere to leave the child with him.

Maybe for the same kind of money that they paid for the information. Though the why is harder to establish, and all of the possibilities bar one are answers that they both hate. Their love for her already tendrilling around them all.

Will persuades Hannibal not to kill the social worker. They both smile at the reversal. 

A different birth this time, not horse borne.

And there’s the new girlfriend. Probably resenting. Not that Will feels wrong about it. Not now he’s steadied, not now he knows. When they’ve established the basics, the patterns and habits Hannibal steps back. This is Will’s. For him and from him. An offering.

..........................

An offering? It’s a sacrament. When he brings the little girl home. This is my body, this is my blood. She clings to his neck, asleep. And with a lisping kind of love, inviting warmth and tenderness. When Will hands her to Hannibal, she goes readily, transferring her affection like a certainty. It breaks something in Will to see Hannibal this way, it mends something in Hannibal to see Will thus. So? Love. Family. A certain kind of contagion, and not every virus kills you. Will sees that they are already infected. Inoculation would come too late for them. Came too late. For them.

Hannibal doesn’t ask what Will did to the stand-ins. And after the first few days neither does Klara. They don’t take her name from her. Terrible still to lose your identity. Just hold her and feed her and water her, tend her. And in her flowering Will sees them all burst forth in bloom.

There is joy in the garden. Is this it? Is this it? This? It seems so.

..................................

Perhaps he’s not so surprised six months later when he comes home, there are boat motors that need fixing everywhere after all, and he finds a small moulded strip of plastic on the kitchen table. A place of offering and sacrifice. There’s a blue line denoting a change in hormones. 

Hannibal is sitting at the table already holding their little girl in his lap, teaching her letters using alphabet blocks. Will reaches for them both and Hannibal looks up at him. Eyes glittering.

A blood child. Will looks at Klara and smiles, he reaches out and strokes her face. A whole family born of blood. 

And knives, glinting.


	4. Chapter 4

They draw up onto the apron at the rest stop and Will gathers his wallet and cell to him. He looks over his shoulder to the back of the car. Through some careful planning and judicious application of memory foam they’ve managed to rig a half decent space for Hannibal to lie down in. Saves the exhaustion of managing a seven hour drive and means both Klara and he can actually sleep. 

Hannibal lies curled round her protectively. She’s draped round the shape she knows will soon be her brother or sister. They all decided, together, they’d rather not know which. At least, not in advance. Klara is too small really to have well defined questions. She just knows that somehow Hannibal will magically produce a sibling for her, like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat, or a bouquet from a wand. Will had rolled his eyes. If only it could be that easy. They both know it wont be.

He gets out of the car and quietly closes the door. Never the less the car stopping has been enough to wake Hannibal, and that means Klara is awake too. They both sit up and watch as Will first waves at them and then fills the car with gas. He’s not so surprised that they both get out of the back seat/bed, make their way to the rest rooms and then into the small shop that is part of the gas station forecourt. He gets on with checking the tyre pressures. And the oil. It wouldn’t do for them to break down somewhere. Though he’s wondered about the legalities if he defended Hannibal. Pregnant omega? Mated alpha? Yeah. And Canada would never extradite someone liable to receive the death penalty. Let alone a pregnant male omega. Not happening. Still not taking the risk though.

Will watches the counter tick over as he fills the tank. He smiles a little, at what on Earth Hannibal might find that he believes is in any way acceptable for any of them inside the convenience store. It’s one of a franchised chain that Hannibal has lamented in other locations. But, well, it’s a thinly populated stretch of road so it would be good if they hit lucky. Or lucky enough for Hannibal not to make sad faces all the way to the motel they’ve booked further ahead, another fifty miles west.

.........................

Inside the store Hannibal holds Klara’s hand as they walk slowly along an aisle, considering the surprising range of items. So many things they have no need of. And some unexpected things too, that Hannibal feels rather drawn to. Olives. Anchovies. Dill gherkins. A taste for the salty. Oh, yes. Well. Cravings.

They pass one or two other shoppers, desultory rather than dedicated. A teenage boy offers to fetch something for Klara which she’s trying to reach whilst Hannibal is distracted by the three baskets that contain fruit. Apples. Bananas. Oranges. They look tired in the way that gas stop food does. Maybe the lighting or the dispirited air. But somehow they look like they have never ever seen the sun and that the earth is just an unsolvable mystery, a half heard rumour.

A woman smiles at Hannibal and laments the lack of choice. She tells him about a farm stall she and the boy passed a few miles west. They’re heading east. They get into talking a little. The woman pleasant and somehow encouraging. He’s found this to be so, alpha women, and beta men, all kind and sweet to a pregnant omega. Alpha men look nervous. Beta women seem resentful. And he is yet to meet an omega woman. Recently anyway. 

Though he wonders now and again how the cool alpha Bedelia Du Maurier would react. How she will react. When he eventually pays her a visit.

The woman laughs about something and the boy asks nicely if he can show Klara the little kid’s comics. Klara looks excited and willing to let go of Hannibal’s hand to go and see, just up the aisle, not even out of sight.

They talk a little longer. Just little nothings. The bell on the front door of the shop goes and Hannibal sees it is Will getting ready to pay. He makes his excuses to the woman, still sweet and friendly. Wishing him well and that his next one is as lively and lovely as Klara. The boy grins and points out two comics and Klara turns hopeful eyes on her papa.

Hannibal glances at both of the little story comics, and smiles at her, and oh they look so alike. Klara waves back at the boy and they both join Will at the front of the store.

Back in the car Klara happily talks about her friend and Hannibal comments on how kind the woman was, how polite the boy, and the farm stall with fresh fruit a few miles ahead. Will smiles indulgently.

Back at the rest stop, the boy and his mom head out to their own car. Just a few things in a paper bag, after all, they already stocked up on fruit and veg. Once they’re in and driving away the boy looks queryingly at her.

“Mom? What is it?”

The last time he saw her this shaken had been that terrible night. The one he only gets flashes of. In black and red, a screaming diachrome.

“It’s nothing Wal. We’re ok. We’re ok.”

He doesn’t push it. Takes one of the apples from the bag and polishes it on his sleeve. Just like Will used to, his dad too.

“She was cute.”

His mom doesn’t say anything at first, then she manages to swallow round something in her throat,

“She was. The spit of her dad too.”

And god help her she does some math and can’t quite add it all up. Unless? Unless he was pregnant before he went into the BSHCI and everyone kept it quiet? Oh god. Which means both that sweet little little girl and the one coming are both Will’s. She swallows round the bile threatening to spill up into her lap.

What was she then? Just a comfort in the dark. And Hannibal? Hannibal. Hannibal. God, she thinks, Will’s blood wife. She might have been the legal one but he was the real one. Sealed by a claim and bond, conjoined. She could see the mark, on the omega’s neck. Will had never said. Never said. So damn fucking Jesus wept Christ never said.

She tries to stop the trembling in her hands, can’t quite manage it. Puts her foot down on the gas instead. Going east. And home. 

Fuck.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is for my friend Mel... we’re on holiday in Copenhagen. Not stalking Mads. Honest! And currently watching season 2. 
> 
> On the stove is ravenstag stew from Janice Poon’s ‘Feeding Hannibal’ cook book. 
> 
> This week, I’m winning.
> 
> Thank you very much for reading.

Jack looks across the table at his visitor opposite, slouched a little in the uncomfortable plastic gather of the chair. His glance falls on the surface between them, the scars, the grain, the stains running deep; probably impossible to get out now. The varnish is thin and peeling, the yellow the crystallised honey colour of the logs in Will and Molly’s old cabin.

He takes a deep breath. Tries to find the words, tries to marshall some semblance of calm, some semblance of a notion. Some reasonable and seasoned response that will make sense.

“Canada makes sense.”

That’s pretty much all he manages and there are multiple variants of the same over the next fifteen minutes. He knows she blames him. She said it. To him. To Freddie goddamit Lounds, to the Verger Blooms. To anyone who would listen. He can’t blame her for that at all. Not one piece. All jigsawed into some semblance of an answer. Some semblance of a truth that she can carry with her. Something she can bear the weight of.

“Mrs Foster. I’m sorry. What more can I do? I’m not sure? The Canadians won’t want us on their patch. I’m not sure how we can follow through.”

Molly Foster, and hell she’s taken back her name with fierce slices of a pen and scrawl on the dotted line. Molly Foster wants there to be something the FEDS can actually do. Sure it’s jurisdiction. Sure it’s what, and where, and why, and even how. But damn. Can’t they. Won’t they. Mustn’t they?

“He was pregnant. Lecter. Maybe seven or eight months. Pregnant.”

She plays it like a winning hand in a game of poker gone bad and hard. Jack just nods.

“Omega. Yeah. I know. Not about the pregnancy. But yeah. Ok.” 

He takes a deeper harder breath and lets it out slowly as she just stares back at him. He doesn’t have a better play. He doesn’t have any thing more, nothing to trick out, but she wants something to show how this will all turn.

“You knew. Before?”

He nods again. Slowly.

“It came out when he was arrested. I knew then. Not before.”

He takes another breath and lets it out into a sigh this time, just an aspirated sound, a tickle of a noise, he can see what’s in her face. He rubs a hand over his own jaw. A rasp. Then he sits up a little straighter, he can give her this at least.

“I don’t think Will knew either. Not then. Maybe not until the Dragon. I saw nothing between them that suggested otherwise.”

Molly swallows, frowns.

“You saw enough.”

He has to agree with that. He did then. Always. He saw enough. More than. Plenty.

They get through a final few minutes. Nothing better, her pushing, him not giving, nothing to give, nothing to offer, nothing he can offer. Not if he doesn’t want to create even more chaos out of this. Nothing.

When she’s gone he looks over the minimal notes he scratched down. There’s nothing in them he doesn’t already know. Not so incompetent as Molly Foster thinks. Yeah. Canada. Yeah. The pregnancy is news. But not such a surprise. Not as much as she might think.

He gets himself out of the interview room and makes his way, tired and gravelly to his office. He passes a few colleagues, some who catch his eye and nod, some who don’t. More who don’t.

Back in his office he opens the bottom drawer of his desk. Gets out the bottle of Jim Beam he keeps quiet in there, and a heavy bottomed tumbler. One of a pair. The other one gone now. Gone the way of Bella. He pours a generous finger or so and lets it sit there. He turns it. The freight and mellow. It sings. In his hand the glass has a good weight. Solid. Reliable. Like the catch of light and dark in the liquor.

He swallows a full measure. Letting it burn. Letting it linger.

From the other side of the desk, from a drawer Jack keeps reliably locked he pulls out a manilla folder. He sets it square on the desk. Aligns the edges. They’ve gone a little soft. Softer than what’s inside. He knows what’s in there. Knows it like the first case he solved. He flips it open. Takes another swallow of drink. Then a mouthful that he holds. Everything distilled.

Inside the folder is a birth certificate. For a girl. Some three and a half years ago. A little over. A little more. He traces his finger over her name. Blameless in this. An innocent. If there’s any such thing any more.

He finds that harder to be sure about these days.

He swallows the mouthful and looks at the parent’s names. He can’t help but wonder if Will knows. And what will happen if he doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s a prequel for this story planned for the ABO Big Bang. If you subscribe to the series it’ll land in your inbox. This story also has a few more chapters.


	6. Chapter 6

Hannibal watches as Will closes the connection on the modem. A broken farewell. A small death. This tastes like Jack. Speaking with Freddie’s tongue.

“It’s clever. I’ll give him that. And typically manipulative.”

“Uncle Jack still misses you.”

Will huffs a dismissive noise, something like the sound he made in an alley once, a barn. Like something that died, wetly, on a cold floor.

“He misses what I can do. He doesn’t miss me.”

“Sartre now Will? Or are you considering Rousseau as your alma pater?”

“I’ve no appetite for existentialism.”

“Not to your taste?”

“Too much salt. Numbs the brain. Hypertension.”

Hannibal considers a smile. Decides against it.

“Where’s our daughter?”

Will looks at him. His beautiful, desperate, angry, vengeful Omega. A recording Angel dealing death swiftly. Who holds his life in his hands. All their lives.

“Upstairs. Doing small child things. She’s been telling her doll about her new sibling. That it is good to be chosen but it’s not second best to be birthed.”

“Come here Will.”

Will walks across the room and stands beside Hannibal seated at a table, his drawing paper and pencils spread out. He looks at the sketch, half completed. How many of them, he thinks, were never quite done.

“No one asks what Patroclus wanted.”

“He died for Achilles.”

“Instead of.”

There’s a quiet full of blades and a haunting of ghosts.

“I won’t kill you Will.”

Will carefully seats himself across Hannibal’s thighs.

“You say that now. But if we’re counting, it’s occurred to you at least four times. I am still an inconvenience.”

“You suit sharp things.”

Will draws a finger over the taught roundness of Hannibal’s pregnancy.

“And you suit soft.”

Hannibal lifts Will’s finger and kisses it gently.

“If it’s not Jack. Might it be Alana?”

Will shrugs.

“Getting her revenge in first? A bright shiny lure? Maybe?”

He leans over and around and across and bites softly along Hannibal’s jaw. Then lowers his head to suck on the bond mark at his throat.

“If you killed me it would be like killing yourself.”

Hannibal gasps when Will bites over the bond mark. Not enough to draw blood. Not this time. But enough to sting sharply.

“It always was.”

.............................

It’s fully dark when Hannibal wakes. Something creeping along his senses. Those ghosts again. 

Will? “Will?”

He feels a sharp tug of pain. Something sundering. Then a wetness. For a moment he fears the hot well of blood. But his hand isn’t sticky or dark when he reaches carefully between his legs.

He pulls himself out of bed. No reassuring warmth beside him. Just a coolness he recalls all too well. A soft misery. He leaves the mess of blankets and sheets and damp. Soon all this will be lost to the sea. Everything falls away. Eventually.

He makes his way along the hall using a rail, a door knob, a change in the flooring, the pull of living and breathing and possibility, to guide him. Strengthen him where he might fail. If he was afraid.

He has never been afraid of the dark. Not since he became the terrible thing that children were supposed to fear lurking there. Monsters are born in the dark. He was. Their child will be born in the light.

In the living room Will sits bathed in the dead glow from the screen of the laptop. Klara is asleep sprawled in his lap.

“Will? It’s time. May we go?”

“Now?”

“My waters broke.”

Will blinks and then focuses and gathers up their daughter.

“The bag’s already in the car. I’ve got your coat.”

“You knew.”

“I had a feeling.”

Hannibal doesn’t question it.

Will puts Klara into the booster seat of the car, heavy and unprotesting. Hannibal slides, ungainly at last, into the passenger’s seat.

Will reaches across the divide, the chasm, the abyss, takes the monster’s hand, then releases it and puts the stick shift in gear.

“All right?”

They don’t speak again until they arrive at the hospital where an emergency obs and gyny nurse comes to admit them, take down particulars, ask all the needful questions.

Hannibal answers quietly and where he pauses Will fills in the blanks. After he’s quiet for a long moment the nurse asks 

“Contraction?” 

Hannibal nods.

“High pain threshold?” 

Will snorts.

“All right then. Can I take you through. How do you feel about leaving him with me?”

Will realises she is talking to him. He looks at Hannibal.

“Your choice.”

Hannibal’s eyes glitter. A dark promise.

“Don’t leave Will. Not this time.”

He looks at the nurse.

“Ok?”

She smiles.

“We like to give couples the chance. It’s a bit rough for male Omegas. Their Alpha partners get a bit distressed sometimes.”

Will doesn’t want to tell her about all the ways in which they have distressed one another, but he thinks she sees it in their faces.

“All right then. Come on. We’ll find someone to take your little girl. We’ve a night care for siblings. Just in case.”

Klara is sleepily passed to another nurse, clinging happily. So trusting, Will thinks, despite everything she has experienced in her short life so far. He feels a moment of biting fury. Breathes round it.

The nurse helps Hannibal to a bed. She examines him with tender hands and soft words. She smiles at Will.

“Should be easier second time around.”

“Yes.” He says. “We hope so.”

She bustles away, promising to come back in a moment. When she’s checked on Klara, found the midwife. Filed the paperwork. Will nods.

Hannibal leans back and closes his eyes.

“You did know.”

“Back then? No. But the moment I laid eyes on her? Then I knew. I assume Jack and Alana do too?”

“Yes. The staff signed NDAs.”

He closes his eyes and makes a small sound of complaint. Will reaches out and holds his hand.

“Another?”

He sits in the chair beside Hannibal’s bed, still holding his hand. They’re both quiet.

“I’m sorry I didn’t manage to kill Jack.”

“And Alana?”

“And Alana.” He pauses. “Is she why you came back for me?”

Tiredly Hannibal says.

“I couldn’t leave without you.”

Will thinks of the BSHCI, the house in Baltimore, Florence, Muskrat Farm, Wolf Trap, and the steel cold of the Atlantic.

“You won’t have to. Not again.”

The nurse comes back in and smiles cheerfully at the two of them.

“You are my beginning Will.”

“And you are my end.”

So lovely she thinks. The traditions of the pair bond vows. How they complete and complement. And speak of compulsion. She can see it between them.

“Your little girl is fine. Let’s see about helping this one along?”

Hannibal smiles slightly. But it’s a gentler thing, a softening. He looks at Will.

“Alpha.”

Will gives him his eyes. Along with everything else. Again. Nothing spilled though. Not this time. Not yet.

“Mine.”

...........................

**Author's Note:**

> If you’re an ABO fan, I’ve another fic ‘The Woods Are Lovely’ I started posting on AO3 last week. It’s a murder mystery AU set in the Maine Woods. It’s all done, I’m just typing up. 12 chapters up so far (August 20018) more this week. 
> 
> If you want ABO fluff and Romcom (no judgement from me, I wrote it) I’ve just finished posting ‘One Night Stand’. People have laughed. (They were meant to.)


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